Honest opinion and in-good-faith disagreement seem rare in
today’s media. Now, that statement may first conjure up the millions of blogs
(ahem) that are nothing but opinions. But! I would challenge the
‘in-good-faith’ clause of many of those. The press, on the other hand, shies
away from opinion in order to present an even-handed account of ‘both sides’.(We’ll cover the value of the
he-said-she-said approach to reporting another time, perhaps.)

Hence the brilliance of unleashing Mike Pesca upon the world
in his new show, The Gist, on Slate. A short, daily podcast, The Gist typically
covers around two topics from the personal (advice column follow ups) to the curious (the state of candy Peeps) to serious
current events, like Ebola. And Pesca’s energy and, yes, opinion, permeates the
show in a way I find refreshing. The ending segment, the spiel, is Pesca
ranting—rant doesn’t need to be a bad word here—on the same mix of anything
from the fantastic to daily minutiae.

Friday’s spiel was an argument in favor of arguments,
couched in the context of debates on HBO and CNN around the very premise of
Islam. Is it a bad religion or a good religion? You can, I’m sure, imagine some
of the simplistic arguments on either side of that simplistic question. But
Pesca was not diving into the specifics, but rather encouraging the exercise.
Strip away the personal attacks and you have the basic elements of a debate.
“There was a struggle over the definition of terms. There were competing
assertions as to what the relevant facts were. There was a thesis offered…”
Counterpoint. Counter-counterpoint.

Although Pesca cops to the increasing tendency to devolve
into “shouting or bullying or baiting or clapping at the dumb parts,” he calls
out for a (possibly imagined?) past when argument was intended not to make your
side feel better, but to reach through the column to the undecided, even the
other side. Because these are different constructions, of course. The
cheerleading argument is much simpler and easier than well-framed persuasion.

I’m not sure that Pesca is imagining the supposed golden age
of discourse quite right. Regardless, I would like to see his vision realized
today. I think of the ongoing conversations St. Louis is having over the events
in Ferguson, and now in the City as well, about black youth and police
behavior. Many of my conversations are civil and respectful, with participants
vulnerable enough to provide honest opinions and to be swayed by good-faith
arguments and to stand comfortable in disagreement. But a fraction (and a
majority online, unsurprisingly) of these conversations are sadly reduced to
choir-preaching and name-calling. Disagreement is taken as evidence of treason.
Even skepticism can be anathema in the wrong circles. That’s sad. Because as
our society grapples not just with the inequities of race, but with our stance
toward Islam, our approach to immigration, or our rights and responsibilities
on the world stage, we need disagreement. The called-for ‘public debate’ after
every significant moment must be both. To shut down debate is to shut out
progress.

I think one thing wrong with our conceptions about disagreement
is the tendency to write off opinions that are not our own far too quickly.
But, as Pesca notes, “if the argument is sound, and if the disagreement is
honest, then an expressed opinion doesn’t need to be subscribed to in order to
be valued.” There is no debate without disagreement. No progress without debate
over the facts and over our values. Let’s not squash that with
conflict-aversion or simplistic name-calling. Let’s embrace it.

Dating — online or off — is frustrating and bewildering, a long and tearful journey to a great partner. While technology has absolutely transformed how we find potential dates, the most significant change is cultural. Instead of settling down with someone “good enough” we ask so much from our partners now that it’s only natural the search for them is arduous.

Our conversations about civic matters—economic policies, schooling systems, religion, science, and social institutions—are severely lacking in nuance and reasoned debate. Instead, what flourishes are simplistic arguments and ad hominem attacks. This trend is strengthened by a media environment where we can easily consume pieces tailored to our point of view, avoiding challenge and change.

On Being is a weekly public radio show hosted by Krista Tippett ostensibly about religion and spirituality, but now the host of a broader series of discussions called the Civil Conversations Project. I used to turn off On Being when it came on my radio Sunday afternoons, put off by the wispy quality, assuming it was a liberal echo chamber of feel-good, empty spirituality.

But as I would listen in snippets, or accidentally turn it on in the car, I found it to be a series of careful, respectful dialogues about difficult subjects, with religion, of course, among the trickiest.

So it did not altogether surprise me to find myself enchanted by arecent episode on gay marriage, which really became a window into how to have civil debates. An interview of David Blankenhorn and Jonathon Rauch—originally on opposite sides of the gay marriage debate, and now friends in agreement on many issues—the discussion covered David’s changed mind on gay marriage, but much more interestingly their process of what they called “achieving disagreement.”

For this post I really want to excerpt some longer segments that, I think, speak for themselves. I encourage listening to the full episode. To have two people agree about how to disagree, that are intellectually honest in their point of view and empathetic enough to consider the other side is tragically rare these days and models a better way to converse. I think we can learn from them how to continue to passionately disagree while remaining not just polite, but truly civil.